I agree… but, just to be devil’s advocate for a second…

What did we expect AW to say? “Yeah… this is a real problem. We’ve lost over a months worth of new hires at $70,000 a pop. Not sure how we can recruit and retain them because we simply can’t offer things like Dreamliners, quick upgrades, or 36 hour overnights in Rome. We were really hoping we could offer to match Delta’s rates and SWAPA would send it out for a vote with no other changes, but now they’re being intransigent and we aren’t sure what to do.”

He had all those investors on the line. He had to downplay it.

That said, I agree with RJs… I don’t want pilots to come here because they have skeletons in the closet, low experience, or nothing more than a high school education. I have to fly with those guys! I want them to hire the best of the best that we can somehow convince to come here as opposed to the Big 3. If that means going to the mat and engaging in a legal strike in order to extract an industry leading quality of life in addition to great pay… if that new contract moves the needle even a little bit for prospective job seekers… then I agree that’s what we have to do.

I just hope the NLRB doesn’t make us wait another year or more to get to the next step in that process.